hello petal

02/16/2014

Hello and welcome to my day on the Moda - Spell it with fabric blog hop. My name is Aneela Hoey and to date I have designed 7 collections for Moda. My newest collection is called Hello Petal and it is now available in stores. I've been busy sewing away with it as you will see below. For this hop, Moda have put together an entire alphabet of quilt blocks for you to use as you wish. As you visit each of the blogs on the hop you will be able to download pdf's for making each letter. As you might have guessed from the photo above my letter is A. You can find the pdf for making the A block here.

Here are a few of the things I have been making with Hello Petal - Granny square blocks.

Economy blocks (these are actually a mix of Hello Petal and some of my older lines along with a few fabrics from my stash).

This one is my Tobacco leaf quilt top which I'm working on getting quilted.

And finally my Magic stars quilt top. This one is still on the wall waiting to be quilted, I really need to do that soon. You can find the pattern here.

02/08/2014

I've been making granny square quilt blocks the last couple of days, I love how they are turning out! I've got 24 done already, so a few more and I'll get a nice big quilt's worth. My husband keeps complaining my quilts are never long enough (well the ones I let him use). This makes me laugh since my hubbie is not that tall, also I explain to him that you can only make quilts as big as your available basting space will allow. That keeps him quiet. Sometimes.

I'm using Jolene's marvellous tutorial here. I'm in love with her original Posy version and also Nicole's super cute Little Apples one, in fact I still want to make a Little Apples one exactly like hers.

01/29/2014

Unsuprisingly after completing my Tobacco Leaf quilt top, I've been in the mood for simple patchwork. I started the week by making myself a new pincushion starring my current favourite kitty cat Marmaduke. My daughter told me I'm not allowed to put any pins into Marmaduke, only around him. He may be a fabric cat but he's a real cat in her eyes. Of course he is.

All the patchwork blocks in this post are destined to be new pillow covers ( the more I make, the more pillows we seem to aquire..). I've enjoyed seperating Hello Petal into different colour stories for these, the above one is a bit of a sherbet mix and reminds me of the Sherbet Dib Dabs I used to eat. Well actually, I still do.

This one is a checkboard of the lightest and darkest tones in the collection. I am so tempted to start a new quilt all in 2" squares, just need to finish off a few things first.

This one is my favourite so far. It's inspired by the Sawtooth Stripe quilt in Denyse Schmidt's book 'Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspirations'. Really I want to make the quilt version so I consoled myself with a pillow incarnation instead. Which of course only makes me want to make the quilt even more. I just need to get on and actually quilt a few things up first.

Hope all these photos are OK. The rainy dull weather is making it so tricky for camera action right now.

01/22/2014

I've finally finished my tobacco leaf quilt top. I celebrated by flinging it over my bed to see how it fits and it's looking right at home already. I used the pattern from Denyse Schmidt's wonderful book - Modern quilts, traditional inspirations and highly recommend it. The instructions were spot on and Denyse's writing style makes me want to make everything in the book.

Making this quilt has been a labour of love in a kind of climbing a mountain style. At times all the cutting and the teeny tiny piecing seemed like it would last forever. This is the kind of quilt that is meant to be made over a period of time but because of the kind of quilter I am, I knew if I ever set this aside it would remain a wip forever. Therefore from the outset I decided to do this in an all or nothing style. Here are a few facts about how things went.

1. I started this project on the day I had to do the Christmas present shopping. The minute I got back I had to delve into making something worthwhile. I am just not a shopping kind of person unless it involves buying fabric.

2. I paper pieced the arcs made up of teeny triangles. I tried it the regular way just once and it wasn't for me. I made my paper piecing template by tracing it from the piecing diagram on the pullout template sheet then making duplicates on my copier.

3. At least three quarters of the white fabric for the triangles came from scraps! This quilt is a great scrap hoover.

4. I went through FOUR rotary blades. I have never gone through so many for a top.

5. Making all the ovals took two weeks of sewing every spare minute I wasn't house-wifing.

6. I made all the 50 odd yards of bias binding for the ovals without the aid of one of those gadget things. It was a breeze and best done using a hot setting but no steam. The only thing I wish I'd done different was to fling an old towel over my ironing board to prevent it getting all scorched.

7. Appliqueing the ovals on to the blocks took me just over two weeks. I timed it perfectly as my holiday sewing project.

8. The finished quilt top is so HEAVY. I'm not sure why it never occured to me that it wouldn't be with all the binding and applique.

9. I'm going to have a breather before attempting to quilt it. I feel like that is like another mountain and I have to chill out in the valley before I attempt to climb that one.

Fabrics were all from my new Hello Petal line. I used the Ditty Dots print in Lovely to make the binding. The background fabric is Bella Solid in Light Blue (9900 63).

Talking of Hello Petal - my precuts finally arrived yesterday! I can't stop smiling, I'm still so in love with these colours.

01/05/2014

I hope you all enjoyed a good relaxing holiday and saw a great start to the new year? I took some time off from the work stuff and settled down to some hand stitching for the most part. By the turn of the new year though I was already back at my sewing machine, stitching up some Economy Blocks in quick succession. I'm using Rita's tutorial.

12/16/2013

I finally got around to making myself a needle case for my knitting projects. I searched online for a pattern then realised I had just the thing right under my nose.

By changing the pocket sizes to fit my needle collection (so far) my Project Book Pouch was the perfect hold all to hold all those necessary accroutrements - circular needles (for socks and cowls), dpns, crochet hooks, cable needles, stitch markers..... There's even space to add my knitting book in there plus any printed patterns (always losing those just when I decide I want to start on something).

So I'm all set for sock knitting over the holidays.

This is my collection of book pouches so far - the top one for knitting, the center one for EPP and the bottom for embroidery. The top two were made out of my new Hello Petal fabric (shipping this week I think) and the bottom one is made in Sew Stitchy.

12/05/2013

Every December I HAVE to start a new quilt. It's the law (in my head). Something about having to do all the things you already have to do makes my fingers itch to start something impossible. This year it's the turn of the Tobacco Leaf quilt.

This one has been on my bucket list for too many months and once I got the idea into my head it just wouldn't leave me alone. I am using the pattern from Denyse Schmidt's book - Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration. Her pattern is brilliantly written and very thorough. I decided though that I should paper piece the arcs because I like a really crisp and precise look and I'm just not accurate enough to do it the regular way. I made my paper piecing templates by tracing them from the Piecing Guide which is on the pull out template sheet. Then I'm just making photocopies from that tracing. Once I have the arcs pieced, I trim them, remove the paper then piece the rest as normal.

See how busy my space looks, it's a hive of activity.

Obviously I'm making it all in Hello Petal.

Doing the paper piecing is time consuming but worth it. The rest really is a breeze. So far I've made 12 leaves, so I am a quarter of the way there.

So that's it so far this week. Basically I've made a pile of fabric leaves. As you do. In December.

12/02/2013

Over the weekend I pieced up a new Magic Stars quilt top, this time all in Hello Petal. For this one I decided to omit the borders and I much rather prefer it without. This pattern goes together so quickly and it makes me so happy to admit that the pattern came about through accidentally piecing some blocks the wrong way up. I love it when accidental turns out better than intentional.

This is how my design space looks currently, Skip is on the left and Magic Stars on the right. It makes for a very pretty site. Both quilts are calling out for me to quilt them right now but I just so happen to have started another quilt...

I see December is going to involve alot of quilting and a binding marathon :)

11/25/2013

At this time of year many people will be making their preparations for the month to come. Many, including my daughters are making those lists and checking them twice. But I have my usual priorities in order and have been busy thinking how I will keep my fingers busy whilst enjoying all that family time to come.

I've been itching to make a new Project Book Pouch because I keep having to change the contents of my original one so often as I switch between projects. I thought making one specifically to keep all my english paper piecing supplies together was getting highly necessary as I always forget where I've put all the paper templates. I have piles of them in the most inconvinient corners of my sewing room so now they can finally move in together and I can remember where they are.

My kind of preparation ;)

All fabrics used are from my new Hello Petal range. I might have mentioned this print - 'Playtime' is my current favourite :)

11/20/2013

I've been looking forward to this one for so long. And now that it's here, I have so many sewing plans, I don't know which way to go first.

So while I put that on hold for a second, let me introduce you to a few favourite prints. Some of my biggest loves in this line are the basics. The dinky floral print on the left was the very first print I designed for this line and that is where the Hello Petal comes from, these make me so so happy I cannot wait to use them. Then those dots up there, I love them all but I definitely that purple on dark navy is my most favourite favourite.

This one is one of the main prints called Jump Rope, I really wanted the design to skip and swing across the fabric, so happy with how this one turned out.

And this print, handstands is basically my youngest daughter in fabric form, all she does is handstands (and a few cartwheels too).

This one is called Playtime and comes in a few other colourways too.

And then there's the Kitty Cats.

All in all, it's new colours, some much darker shades I've been wanting to include for a while (and that mid blue shade by the way is absolute favourite thing), lots of movement and a whole heap of sugar (calorie free of course).

I just hope you like it?

Hello Petal starts shipping in December (that's in a couple of weeks folks)!!!!

I'll be updating with a list of supplier's so do let me know if you are a store stocking this one.